


wake up and show the light

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Insomnia, Names, Possibly Pre-Slash, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Recovering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title taken from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSj91yopjDg">"Living Inside the Shell"</a>, which came on just as I was finishing this draft. The song comes from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series, and it was written by Shanti Snyder and performed by Steve Conte.</p>
    </blockquote>





	wake up and show the light

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from ["Living Inside the Shell"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSj91yopjDg), which came on just as I was finishing this draft. The song comes from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series, and it was written by Shanti Snyder and performed by Steve Conte.

The Soldier opened his eyes to a ceiling of softly reflected neon-stained night skies: the unstoppable lights of Manhattan, and the New York City night that could never really sleep.

He tracked the movement of faraway drifting shadows – drones and displays near and far – and he couldn’t understand any of the images, but at least the light show was neutral. At least the light show passed no judgements. 

Lights flickering and shifting. He got to his feet.

Those lights were better than the bloody images in his head. The feel of things cracking beneath his hands. Spilled fluids. Broken containers, organic or not, though the former more often than not. 

Those lights were silent where his head was full of screams, and he would rather try to make sense of the incomprehensible lights, of time and years blurring together, the weight of a gun in his hands versus the pillow in which his left hand was currently tearing finger-shaped holes.

He got up. He had refused to sleep in the bed that was supposed to be his, in this room that he’d been given. The mattress was too soft. He slept on the floor instead. A pallet of comforters and a handful of blankets. He planned to keep the torn pillow, if such a thing were at all possible. He could mend it, and tear it again if he had to, because it was a pillow and it was not – someone. Anyone. A victim, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. 

And all of them with blue eyes and blood and bruises and words on broken mouths. _Then finish it. ’Cause I’m with you ’til the end of the line._

The Soldier knew how to walk quietly, knew how to dodge sensors and cameras, and he was not expecting the voice that greeted him from the walls, from the door: “Good evening, Sergeant. It is good to see you up and about. Do you require any assistance?”

He didn’t know why he felt compelled to answer. There was something strange about that voice. It was a machine’s voice and it was – it was not quite human, but it came close. He was used to harsh voices and he was used to metallic screaming, machine voices and his own, and this voice was none of those voices. Something to it that he couldn’t understand. All he knew was that he had to reply. “I – I know the layout of the building.”

“Then I can tell you where the inhabitants of these upper floors are, in case you wish to see them, or perhaps to avoid them?”

Avoid. That sounded like a good idea. “I want to be in places where they’re not.”

“Understood, Sergeant. The following people are not, repeat not, present at the Tower tonight: Miss Potts and Sir, who are spending the week in Miami. Colonel Rhodes and Colonel Danvers are, as I understand, on assignment, and their locations are currently classified. Agents Barton and Romanova, likewise, together with Director Coulson and his team.”

The names were familiar. Every single one of them. A dossier in his head with each new name. He closed his eyes. Tried to ignore the notes. How to take each individual down. Neutralization. Elimination. 

He shut those words out of his mind as best as he could. 

“...Doctors Banner, Foster, and Ross are in their respective laboratories.”

He had a question, suddenly. “I. I want to know where Steve is. Captain Rogers. I don’t know what you call him. He was my mission. I couldn’t go through with the mission.”

Discretion in the voice that came from everywhere. “Captain Rogers is in his quarters, Sergeant Barnes. I can let him know that you are asking after him – ”

“No,” the Soldier said. One single word and one single sound and yet he heard himself stuttering around its edges.

He – skulked. That was a good word. He had been rewarded for being stealthy, for a given value of “rewarded”. Sedatives, he thought. That had probably been someone᾿s idea of giving him a break. He had never reacted well to such things. Whatever he was carrying around in his blood didn’t play well with most other chemicals. Sedatives had little effect on him. A few minutes, and then pain again. 

What had he heard one of the others say, in those moments of being awake and in those moments of hidden listening from behind the crack in the door of his room? “Useless things are useless.” Redundancy. It still seemed apt now – nonsensical, but apt. Just like the meaningless word itself.

Movement in the corridor ahead. He hadn’t listened to the rest of the machine voice’s notes; no matter. He ducked into the nearest shadowed alcove, making sure to tuck his left arm in against the wall so as not to create stray reflections. A slight figure passing by, wrapped in several layers. 

He almost cringed away from the hems – he knew a white laboratory coat when he saw one – but the figure was also wearing a rough shawl in eye-watering oranges and purples, to say nothing of the floppy hat in a screaming shade of green. Absent-minded yawns and the scent of trailing tea and flowery soap.

The Soldier let Betty Ross pass and continued on his way, though he hugged the shadows now, actively pursuing them this time, and that took him away from the lights that had woken him up because he cast reflections in the windows, but at least he could still take in the view, incomprehensible and beautiful as it was, bright and alive as he wasn’t, even in the depths of – he passed a clock at the next intersection, peaceful green numbers – way the hell past midnight.

At the door to the mission᾿s quarters he gathered his courage and looked around and – it was the work of seconds to unlock the door, to slip in noiseless and unseen. Why the voice in the walls had nothing to say about his actions he had no idea. He knew he was dangerous and he deserved to be monitored; he might have even preferred it.

These rooms were empty: the quiet kind of empty, the haunted kind of empty. Frozen faces on the walls: his enhanced eyes could pick out the photographs, could trace the strokes in pencil and charcoal. Gray faces, gray smiles, gray unrecognizable. 

He came upon the bed and it was empty, as empty as the room in which it stood. He vaguely recognized the neat folds in the sheets. He vaguely recognized the pillows, arranged like sentries, at the head of the board.

The bed was empty when it should have been occupied, and yet the voice in the walls had identified this as the location of the mission – 

“Bucky. Hi.” 

A tired voice. It sounded – not rough. Not angry. Nothing at all like shouting or jeering or fear. 

The Soldier turned around.

Wide open windows full of bright lights and incomprehensible slapdash messages written in the lines of the mission’s face. Not just that. There was more. Ghosts and grief. 

He tried to find the right words. “You are – sad,” he told the mission. There was something left in the shattered corners of his mind, the scattered broken pieces of his memories: a different imperative. Not one that called for a gun. The imperative that had stayed his hand. The imperative that sounded like _the end of the line_.

Blink. The mission stopped in mid-stride. Said, softly, “You always knew me best. You always saw through me.”

The Soldier stepped aside. The mission moved to the foot of the bed. Sat down. “You maybe want to get comfortable,” the mission said. “I don’t know where you want to be, or if you want to be here, because – yeah, you got me, I’m not okay, I’m not sure I even know what that means any more.” A pause. “Do you want to be here?”

Words. A question. An answer was required of him. He had no idea what to say. It was a condition he was painfully familiar with. Words had not been needed for a long time. “I don’t know where to go.”

He expected to be chastised. He expected to be corrected. He expected the machine. He was not expecting a soft wounded laugh. He was not expecting the words, “You and me both, pal.”

“That means – ” The Soldier groped for a word. “друг.”

“Yes.” The mission nodded. “I think that’s a good word. Natasha calls me that, sometimes, when she’s feeling sentimental. Though for all I know she could be calling me something terrible.”

“Droog,” the Soldier said. “Friend. You called me a friend. Am I?”

“You were. Don’t know about now. As has been impressed upon me several times now, sometimes politely and most of the time not-so-politely, we᾿re not the same any more.”

“Asset. They called me that.”

“And I’m the Captain. The hell if I always know what that means.”

“You don’t know,” the Soldier ventured. He braced himself for a blow. If words were not needed, questions were punished. Questions drew blood.

The mission laughed again, that soft laugh full of tears. “I don’t. Not always.”

“I.” The Soldier felt something rise off his shoulders as he said, “I feel the same way. Not like you. I feel like this every day.”

He expected the mission to comment; he did not expect the mission to make a quiet sound and look away. 

“I have saddened you.” He thought of the faces on the walls. One of them might have been familiar. “I – what do I do?”

Silence.

A silence as long as having his mind torn away from him; a silence like a rubber guard in his mouth. 

Movement, and he blinked: and the mission, the Captain, was on his feet. Was standing over him. A hand suspended between them. 

Unthinkingly, he reached out and took that hand. His left hand around bruised knuckles, around a slashed-up palm.

He was pulled up and onto his feet. He was led to the bed itself. A weight on his shoulder. It was a relief to be guided. He sat down and the mission sat down next to him. Pressed together, shoulder to hip, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.

It felt good to be sitting down. No. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t it. 

It felt good to be sitting down next to – the other man. Not a mission, not just a Captain. The Soldier could understand that much. The other man didn’t always know. He just looked like it. That was understandable. That seemed right. 

A tug, on his sleeve.

He looked into the other man᾿s face, into those questioning eyes. “I am – will you – can I touch you?”

The Soldier blinked. “How do you mean?”

The response he got: a weight around his shoulders, nothing heavy, nothing like a burden. 

It seemed right to reciprocate: but he couldn’t place his arm around the other man’s shoulders. He settled for putting his arm around the other man’s lower back. 

That got him a smile. “You remember this?”

“No. But – I thought it was the right thing to do. Is it?” the Soldier asked.

“Yeah.”

Silence, again. He found himself matching the other man’s breathing. 

He found himself remembering something: the other man, not like this, small and fighting and struggling for every breath.

 _Not the same any more._ The other man’s words from earlier. 

He didn’t know if it was true, but he knew he could believe. He had believed the other man’s words, on the Project Insight helicarrier. He could believe the other man tonight. 

He dared. More questions. “What is your name?” He made himself explain. “They took your name away from me, but not your face. On the bridge. I recognized you. Then they took that away. They took your name away. What is your name?”

A quiet reply. “Steve.”

“And – what is my name? You call me something.”

“Your name.” A pause. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“That is not what you call me.”

“I call you Bucky, yes, because – that was the name you gave me. You told me that was your name, first time we met.”

“I am not familiar with that name,” the Soldier said.

The other man – Steve – nodded. Lines in the corners of his eyes, and pain in those lines.

“The voice in the walls calls me Sergeant.”

Another nod. “JARVIS. Yes. I don᾿t know where his politeness comes from. Certainly never from Tony. Is that what you’d rather be called?”

“No.” He – wanted. “A name. A real name.” Words were difficult. Words were slow to form on his tongue. He paused between words and sentences and thoughts. “You can call me – you can call me James.”

He could stop thinking about machines and murders and his memories, here. 

Silence, or speaking.

He could do those things, with Steve.

And he drew Steve a little closer. Breathed in time with him. 

On the walls, the reflections of the neon rainbows, of New York City nights.

**Author's Note:**

> Written sort of as a meditation and sort of as a way of self-medicating after a long and emotionally difficult weekend, so if you read this, please accept my sincere thanks. I hope it works.
> 
> \-----
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
